Originally Posted by JohnDThompson

To further expand on this, when parts are worn or damaged they are retired from racing use because nobody wants to lose their NJS approval over a failure during a race. In the past, these parts and frames were simply scrapped; now they are sold to people like "deathhare."

So when you buy a retired NJS frame, what you are buying is a frame that has been pulled from service because the risk of failure was seen to be greater than the cost of a new frame. If it were my money, and I was concerned about quality, I know I'd rather have a frame built for me by one of the many highly competent North American frame builders over buying a beat up frame built for somebody else and with an unknown and unknowable history of use/abuse.